An Appeal for Dogs

[IsThisRad]

As of late, I’ve found myself unable to break away from contemplation of a particularly noticeable absence in Haven & Hearth’s collection of tameable creatures- a hole in the husbandry system I can no longer ignore. The lack of dog and cat companions casts a deep, cold shadow over the hearthlands that leaves hermit and lawspeaker alike left only to stew in disheartening lonesomeness, unyielding, world after cruel world.

This cannot be countenanced. It is for this reason I submit my thoughts here today, with hope that this oversight may someday be corrected. I’m going to talk about dogs first because I already spent way more time on typing this and I’m going to do other things now.

DOGS - WHY PUT IN THE MAN HOURS

In my mind there are a variety of good options when it comes to functions these canines can serve. I will get to these in a moment, but first on getting around- Dogs should be able to travel with players, walking more with you rather than behind you like the rest of the tameable animals. I believe this should be via a “heel” right-click command or similar function rather than ropes, and there should probably be a limit to how many dogs can follow you (maybe two) for obvious reasons. Immediately building on this we have numerous options for utilities dogs could fulfill-

HAVEN RETRIEVERS - FETCHING

Dogs assist in attaining nearby foragables and vermin- so long as you can see them on your minimap, you can command a heeling dog to “fetch,” rather than “pick” an item. Upon issuing this command the dog will dash from the player’s side, grabbing the foragable in its mouth and then returning to the player to deposit it into their inventory (or holding it themselves until manual retrieval if your inventory is full). For squirrels and rabbits and the like this is much the same- upon issuing the command the dog will retrieve and return the dead vermin to you.

This would be a convenience in that you’re sending an entity to go pick up a foragable or small creature without having to stray from your intended path, but it’s one that I think eliminates a small bit of tedium while traveling, but doesn’t trivialize anything- players are still going to be collecting the majority of items themselves.

As far as interface goes, I wouldn’t want to give extra commands to picking foragables or make choosing which dog to send complicated, so maybe shift clicking on a heeling dog brings up a little dog cursor (similar to clicking wagon animal) with which you can right click on foragable/animal to send them off. To me that seems intuitive.

CLAIM PUPS - GUARD DOGS

Dogs can serve as insurance against crimes/grief on personal and village claims. Roping a dog to a tree or simply letting it roam within your claim or village will make it sensitive to crimes within a certain radius (trespass response should have a smaller radius to hopefully prevent complete prevention of ingress around large villages, and guard dog response should of course be subject to claim permissions) at which point it will break off its leash and attack the offending player. Dogs will not leave their claims, however, so this is a repellant as opposed to a death sentence. This should probably change if they’re being attacked to prevent cheese via combat position just outside of their claim.

When it comes to dogs traveling with players, dogs should join combat when the player is hit by a combat move, or upon a player hitting another entity with a combat move. It is not wise to enable players to noncommittally sic dogs at each other across distances with no danger to themselves, even if that distance is just that of the minimap. With this restriction in place I am 85% sure I’m positive that this absolutely most likely keeps these hounds probably definitely balanced out in the field. And you can quote me on that.

HEARTHLAND SHEPHERDS - LIVESTOCK HERDING

Moving groups of livestock across distances is a massive pain in the ass and I believe this may be an opportunity to tie dogs to other livestock in an efficient and immersive manner. By assigning at least one dog to a tamed livestock animal (I assume via the shift-click dog cursor I mentioned earlier), the commanded dog will form a herd with said animal, effectively merging the two into one entity that follows you. Further assigning dog/herd to more animals causes the herd to grow larger to a maximum of six(?) while dog is assigned and twelve(?) with two- please keep in mind that these are numbers I made up on a whim. Visual size of the herd as well as convenient and ease of movement in comparison to roping a shitton of animals at once should probably be taken into account.

The intention is that as the herd acts as one entity, moving groups of animals becomes more feasible, less chaotic, and doesn’t take up half your inventory with leashed ropes. This benefits crossing water via rafts in particular, since instead of having to individually move and keep track of each animal you’re now simply floating the entire herd in one fell swoop. Hypothetically this makes shepherding via dog useful even when moving just two animals.

As a side note, if combat is initiated with the herd, the dog(s) currently shepherding should disconnect and begin combat to defend themselves or the player. If you want to be a horrible terrible masochist, you could have the herd just disband and scatter from here. My preference is that the herd persists for 1-2 minutes, only dispersing if dogs aren’t assigned within that time frame.

DOGGY LOGISTICS - HI YES I’D LIKE TO SPEND MORE OF MY VALUABLE TIME READING ABOUT IMAGINING DOGS IN HAVEN & HEARTH

Okay just for you I’ll keep going. Some more details and concepts-

DOGGY BOWLS

Dogs eat separately from farm animals- instead of eating swill, dogs need food sourced from meat and a variety of other foods such as vegetables, eggs, and the occasional cheese. For that reason, dogs consume food and water from Doggy Bowls instead of troughs. They can be crafted from Acre Clay for Earthenware Doggy Bowls via Kiln (Pottery required), or any metal for Metal Doggy Bowls via casting (Metal Working required).

Dogs can’t fall back on eating grass like livestock, so it’s necessary to ensure a Doggy Bowl is both within their claim and accessible (as in they can pathfind to it when hungry) at all times. Guard Dogs need to eat as well, so they’ll need bowls within their radius. Alternatively you should probably be able to feed dogs manually by just right clicking with appropriate food items.

PETTING BUFF

To satisfy the assumption that you will be able to pet dogs, idea is once per in-game day you can use a pet action via dog’s right click menu. This initiated a short pet/belly rub action/animation, after which both you and your dog will receive a “Creature Comfort”, or whatever the name is, buff that brings peace and contentedness to your spirit, translating to some combination of a travel weariness recovery speed increase, slight wound healing increase (on self healing wounds), or a buff to Will and/or Psyche. Not all of these translate to the dog of course. Additionally, this should probably be on a per player per day limit regardless of how many dogs you own and can pet.

Petting could sometimes bestow a “Clump of Dog Fur” or similar curio as well as a neat little bonus.

DOG STATS & PUPPY POWER

This would be a completely new system in a tameable animal but I like the idea of dogs having an Attribute system instead of material qualities for butchering. This would mean dogs have their own Strength, Agility, Constitution, and Will (other crafting stats are irrelevant) which are raised through food FEPs. Would likely be slower to progress than player stats and limited by dog quality, and therefore the general quality of the food they’re eating, but the concept of dogs being elevated from other animals and filling an interesting niche is neat to me.

As for Puppy Power, in this case its capacity/drain would be determined primarily by Will. When dogs are commanded to fetch or are engaged in combat, they move at run speed. Dogs would also generally mirror whatever speed their owner player character is moving at, and importantly need to be able to swim with you as well, so this would need to be managed similar to horse Pony Power.

As an aside, dogs could inexplicably average the quality of fetched small animals upwards according to their own quality. I like this idea a lot as it makes for a unique method for attaining higher quality miscellaneous animals that takes some investment.

As an aside to my aside, giving dogs stats raised by food would necessitate assigning Doggy Bowls on a per dog basis for control over what specific foods they eat.

MY DOG IS DEAD NOW WHAT

On one hand, processing dead dogs could give the usual hide/guts/meat/bone materials. On the other, they could be differentiated by other animals and be persistent and unprocessable once killed, needing to be buried similar to player characters. If dogs abide by a state system, this could confer a “Canine’s Heartsoul” or similar item which can be fed to a recently born puppy to receive a moderate percentage of stats from the deceased. Dogs could be important enough to be special like this. Maybe these options aren’t mutually exclusive.

WAIT A SECOND YOU HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT ACTUAL TAMING YOU HACK FRAUD

You got me. This is a bit of a gray area. Someone familiar with how taming works for other animals in Haven would probably assume dogs derive from wolves once you give them a taming item and beat them into submission, like every other domestic animal in the game, but there are some glaring flaws with implementing dogs in this manner in spite of its intuitiveness-

[*]Wolves are very scary and would gatekeep tame dogs from a lot of players
Wolves can be hard to find and are largely limited to Winter, or full Moons (unless you’re near a mountain), which would suck
The risk of trying to attain a dog becomes ridiculously skewed compared to other animals due to the fact that they can actually kill your character
Taking out a wolf pack is a cool milestone and deflating that by making them tameable is, to me, undesirable

All this would lock dogs away from at least the early game, which I feel would be a mistake since it would lock new players out of the benefits of having dogs, which are not insubstantial with combat and claim defense capabilities.

Bear with me as I try to articulate this- a benefit to the dog is that in situations such as a character being assaulted by a couple deliberate and efficient players ambushing off a snekkja within the first three days of a new world, a player who has prioritized attaining a dog has earned at the very least some wiggle room during the encounter, as the dog must be addressed by raiders even as they flee. Or as another example, a character with a drying claim deterring other would-be thieves while they work toward leather for their palisade and are otherwise very vulnerable. Even disregarding this (because yea most likely it won’t matter that much in the end for these), if the dog is implemented in any way resembling what’s described here, it would be a shame to not be reasonably accessible. In fact, I would hypothesize that to an inexperienced solo player, having the dog as a companion while they flail around and learn systems to work through the early game would make it more enjoyable. People like having little little virtual buddies.

With that in mind, I think the thing that makes the most sense is to not attempt to couple domesticated dogs with wolves and instead see untamed dogs implemented as their own creature. “Wild Dog”, or something similar. Primitive dogs with domestic genes to me are in line with the time periods Haven emulates/spans. Dogs have been around for a long time, that’s fine.

As for the taming process itself, probably something similar to the existing method but slightly longer. Initiate by giving the wild dog meat, or maybe bone material (or something like a Wishbone specifically if you want the barrier of entry to be a little higher) after which it will follow you around for awhile, intermittently begging for more of the taming item for the next thirty minutes or so until it lets you pet it, at which point it’s fully tame. Or something.

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS THINGS

- Dogs hopefully have some fun visual variety, but to be able to tell at a glance maybe let you toggle seeing dog names similar to players
- Dogs shouldn’t automatically be tied to the claim they’re standing on. Dogs should need to be tied to a claim or village pole. IDK shift click for the dog cursor and right click the claim for an “attune” option and give them an animation where they walk over and piss on it like a fire hydrant. Whatever
- Incorporate a “Dog Collar” item which you can place on dogs which establishes you as their set-in-stone owner so long as you’re alive. Probably made of a piece of leather. Let it be optionally crafted with pigment to give it different colors.
- Ownership is per player and there is a primary owner, but can be extended to others via dog collar setting

YEA OKAY DUDE YOU HAVE LOST YOUR GODDAMN MIND IF YOU THINK I’M GOING TO READ ALL OF THAT

Okay here’s your TLDR. But I don't like your tone

- Dogs can fetch items for you
- Dogs can guard claims for you, to an extent
- Dogs can herd animals for more convenient transport
- Let dogs be special and cool and freakin sweet and give them Abilities and all that implies
- All the other stuff

Uh ummmm ermmmmmm oh yeah

- Please add the dogs to the game

Thank you for your time. Also, Jorb and Loftar, please add sex and smegma and lovemaking to the game that would be pretty awesome I think

[Faravidus]

srsly though Dogs would be cool

[dafels]

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MY DOG IS DEAD NOW WHAT
On one hand, processing dead dogs could give the usual hide/guts/meat/bone materials. On the other, they could be differentiated by other animals and be persistent and unprocessable once killed, needing to be buried similar to player characters. If dogs abide by a state system, this could confer a “Canine’s Heartsoul” or similar item which can be fed to a recently born puppy to receive a moderate percentage of stats from the deceased. Dogs could be important enough to be special like this. Maybe these options aren’t mutually exclusive.

Nah not participating in this, dogs should be unprocessable

[irongete]

dogs model mesh should vary slightly based on their parents. specific parts like ears, paws, snouot and other relevant parts of the dog could have subtle changes to reflect genetic variation, similar to how current cow babys inherit their parent patches, this way we can have our own unique breeds

[grumgrumganoe]

haven players spending 2500 man-hours to cook a 40gb spreadsheet to determine the optimal path for breeding fresh-tamed wolves into a hideous pug that can’t breathe or walk and looks like a squashed ogre:

[Massa]

if we had friendly disposable things that we can breed and use to help us hunt animals that would be cool